When
Jessie Funk was in high school, her mother said she was very self-focused.

“She was a good kid, but
she’d focus on herself rather than finding a way to make others happier,” Park
Lane teacher Linda Tognoni said.

Much of that has changed as
Funk now leads 18-member student groups on humanitarian service trips, recently
to the village of Cho, outside the capital city Accra of Ghana.

“Several of the teenagers
I took are overcoming serious issues in their lives so this is a way I can pay
it forward by helping these people in the village as well as these teens,” Funk
said. “I can use my talents as a singer to help raise money to help the
villagers and educate others about their plights so others will help.”

Through a PowerPoint
presentation coupled with songs, Funk led the
elementary school students to learn what life was like for the Ghana orphan
students.

“They had one room in their
school. The roof was made out of tree. Some had desks, but many sat on the dirt
floor. The walls were painted like a chalkboard so they could write on the
walls,” she said.

The 40 children slept in
dormitory-style accommodations. While Funk was there, her group built a
kitchen, brought a microwave and hooked up a cooling system. Then,
they stocked it with groceries.

“Many of us are worried if we
don’t have the right shoes or hairstyle, but these kids have real worries and
are so grateful for what they have. They’re thankful for the chance to go to
school and they’re so happy,” she said.

Funk said the orphanage and
school began from one man named Francis. He had been an orphan since age eight
and sought food from the garbage and slept in the streets until a German family
sponsored him. They provided him with schooling, food and clothes and he eventually
moved to the United States to learn nursing.

“After he became a nurse,
what do you think he did?” Funk asked students. “He returned to his village and
built an orphanage there with a place for those students to be taken care of
and have schooling. He’s a real-life hero.”

Her
humanitarian group took shoes for the orphans.

“The orphans don’t have
shoes, but to go to school, they must have shoes. So it’s a big deal for them. When
they walked in to where we had all the shoes spread out, they were so
respectful. When we asked them which pair they wanted, they were so surprised
they got to choose. Besides attending school, shoes help keep
them safe from getting sores and germs which can spread through their whole
bodies,” Funk said.

At the beginning and the
ending of her presentation, Funk asked Park Lane students what they
were grateful for in their lives. While some answers remained the
same — family, homes and clothes — the early answers of sports and sledding
changed to health, food and clean water.

Park Lane students then
pledged to help others, whether it was to give donations of clothing, medical
supplies, shoes and other items to those in the community or to a humanitarian
trip or maybe it was just to be a bit kinder to fellow students at school or
people in their community.

Fourth-grader Tinsley Smith
said she learned that sometimes she asks for things she wants when they aren’t
things she needs.

“I learned that I should be
grateful for what I have instead of asking for more,” she said. “I have clean
water and toilets and they just have a hole in the ground. I get to go to
school and learn and that doesn’t just happen for those kids.”

Classmate
Drake Parker said that he learned Americans, as a whole, are rich.

“We have a lot more like
bikes, motorcycles and cars, so we’re wealthy since they don’t
have any of that. I’m better off just by having my parents and the love they
give,” he said.

Fourth-grader
Bailey Angus said that she also learned to never give up, even if she fails a
test.

“I
can see what I have compared to them and I realize I should always try,” she
said.

Teacher
Angela Drake said that she hopes Funk’s presentation opened her students’ eyes.

“I hope they learned that
even when hard things happen, they can still be grateful and happy for what
they have,” she said. “We can learn to make ourselves happier by helping.”